It was never going to be a normal episode.
But that didn't deter the host, writers and producers of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' from trying to stick to the formula the best they could.
As usual, there was a monologue, a rather iffy sketch, a 'Meanwhile' slot, a big celebrity interview and even a Colbert Questionnaire.
However no matter how hard Colbert and his team tried, it was hard to shake off the overwhelming sense of sadness that this wasn't just the end of his reign but the end of 'The Late Show'.
As a result, the whole show felt flat.
Hollywood stars from Bryan Cranston to Ryan Reynolds to Billy Crystal and Robert de Niro hadn't come to just praise Colbert but bury a talk show.
Rather surprisingly, Colbert's monologue felt uncharacteristically timid with no mention of President Donald Trump.
Interruptions from Cranston, Paul Rudd and Tim Meadows, all pretending to be expecting to be the host's final guest were a little awkward and a bit irritating.
The show's Meanwhile slot also underwhelmed, while a special edition of the Colbert Questionnaire with Jon Dickerson anchoring and celebrities like Crystal, de Niro, Aubrey Plaza, Martha Stewart, Jim Gaffigan, Tiffany Hadish, Weird Al Yankovic, Josh Brolin, Amy Sedaris, James Taylor, Mark Hamill, Jeff Daniels, Ben Stiller and the host's wife Evie putting the questions to him also dragged.
Even the big celebrity interview with Paul McCartney in the Ed Sullivan Theater, where he famously made his US television debut with The Beatles, wasn't up there with Colbert's best.
There were recollections of that 1964 TV appearance, a puff for McCartney's new album and some jokes about Paul Mescal playing the Beatle in Sam Mendes' quartet of films about each member of the Liverpool band.
McCartney did rather pointedly say when The Beatles arrived in America, they were excited because it was the home of rock n'roll, "the land of the free and the home of democracy," adding hopefully it could be again.
The interview ended abruptly to make way for a 'Doctor Who' style comedy sketch about a talk show wormhole swallowing everything up in the Ed Sullivan Theater including Neil de Grasse Tyson.
With Jon Stewart and Colbert's "Strike Force Five" group of Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers and John Oliver, his fellow late night talk show hosts appearing to give him a pep talk, there was at least one decent gag about the wormhole.
In a veiled reference to the failed efforts by the Trump administration to shut down his ABC talkshow following the Charlie Kirk murder, Kimmel deadpanned: "One of these holes opened up in my show but it went away after three days."
The last musical hurrah came in the form of Colbert, Elvis Costello, former musical collaborator Jon Batiste and subsequent band leader Louis Cato jamming and giving us a rendition of Costello's 'Jump Up'.
A final blast saw McCartney lead the four of them, Cato's house band and the entire crew in a rousing version of The Beatles' 'Hello Goodbye'.
As send offs went, it wasn't as good as you'd hoped and it all felt a bit funereal.
Other editions of the show in recent weeks featuring Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Michael Stipe, David Byrne, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Stewart and Colbert's 'Late Show' predecessor Dave Letterman felt like more effective eulogies.
When people look back, though, on the axing of America's top rated late night talk show by CBS following the takeover by Trump ally, David Ellison's Paramount Skydance, they'll remember a show that regularly and humourously punctured the pomposity of US politics and got under the thin skin of a US President and his most ardent followers.
And they may also regret the fact that late night US television will never feel the same.
(The last edition of CBS's 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' aired on May 21, 2026)
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